Syr­ian rebels lose all of north­east Aleppo: mon­i­tor

SYR­IAN rebels have lost all of the north­ern neigh­bour­hoods of their strong­hold in east­ern Aleppo, a mon­i­tor said yes­ter­day, as the army pushed an of­fen­sive to re­take the bat­tered city.

The army cap­tured the Sakhur, Hay­dariya and Sheikh Khodr neigh­bour­hoods yes­ter­day, while Kur­dish forces took the Sheikh Fares dis­trict from rebels, the Syr­ian Ob­ser­va­tory for Hu­man Rights said.

Kur­dish forces in Aleppo are not of­fi­cially al­lied with the regime, but the op­po­si­tion re­gards them as co­op­er­at­ing with the govern­ment in a bid to re­cap­ture the city.

“The rebels have lost con­trol of all the neigh­bour­hoods in the north of east Aleppo, and this is their worst de­feat since they seized half the city in 2012,” said Ob­ser­va­tory di­rec­tor Rami Ab­del Rah­man.

Syr­ian state me­dia re­ported the cap­ture of Hay­dariya and Sakhur as it looped footage show­ing some of the thou­sands of civil­ians who have fled east Aleppo in re­cent days as loy­al­ist troops have ad­vanced.

The army re­newed an op­er­a­tion to re­take east­ern Aleppo nearly two weeks ago, hop­ing to deal the op­po­si­tion a po­ten­tially dev­as­tat­ing blow to their sur­vival.

Syria’s Al-Watan daily, which is close to the govern­ment, said the army was ad­vanc­ing quickly.

It said the next stage of the op­er­a­tion would be “to di­vide the re­main­ing area into se­cu­rity dis­tricts that will be eas­ily con­trolled and to cap­ture them suc­ces­sively”. –